The Forests Of Gleor

Chapter 18

The house that the High Kaireen gave Blade lay high up in the Mountains of Hoga, lonely and isolated. Only a few miles to the west was the tree line. Beyond the trees Blade could see bare peaks of gray and blue rock and even the white glinting of snowcaps.

He could seldom see that far, though. Two days out of three, gray mist or grayer clouds surrounded him. Then the house seemed to be alone in an otherwise empty world.

The days were often cool and the nights usually chilly. Blade did not notice this. He spent all the hours of the day and a good part of the night in his steaming hot workshop. Fires burned there around the clock, under bubbling pots of resin or boiling cauldrons of leaves. Smoke and steam rose up in clouds and swirled around Blade. Sometimes they found a way out through the crude chimney or the cracks in the boarded-up windows. Most of the time they didn't.

Blade set himself a grueling pace as he assembled and tested the distilling apparatus. That took several weeks. He had been right in theory. With threebo stems, resin, and iron or stone pots one could put together a fairly serviceable piece of equipment. Putting that theory into practice took time and effort, much of both wasted. Finally Blade managed to build something that would neither leak nor explode nor catch fire, and he was able to really go to work.

He now worked harder than ever, sixteen and eighteen hours a day. At the end of the day he was frequently exhausted or dizzy and only half-awake from the sleeping water's steam. He could do nothing except stagger to his sleeping room and collapse.

Blade grew lean and hungry looking, his eyes were perpetually red and inflamed, his hands were callused, black with caked soot and sticky with resin. It was probably a good thing that Neena wasn't with him. He would hardly have time to kiss her goodnight!

The High Kaireen gave Blade four carefully chosen assistants. All of them were strong young men, none of them stupid and all of them good at taking orders.

«They were chosen for those qualities,» the High Kaireen told Blade. «Their orders are to do as you tell them, keep you and the house and everything in it from harm, and otherwise keep their mouths shut.»

«What about the guards to be sent by the mountain clans?»

«They will never come within the walls around the house. Nor will they know what you do within, except that you work to do much harm to those of Trawn. That is enough to make sure that the mountain people will keep their mouths closed and their vigil unbroken. They hate those of Trawn in a way you would not understand unless you had spent years among them.»

The four assistants obeyed their orders, as far as Blade could tell. They never objected to working a fifteen-hour day, seldom spoke unless spoken to; and seemed to be able to live without food or sleep. He had no idea of how much they were learning about what he was doing, or how much they would be able to tell anyone else about it. Even if they knew all of his secrets, they would find it hard to get through the mountain clansmen and reach anyone who would listen to them.

The clansmen were also obeying their orders. Blade never saw them from the house during the day. Occasionally he would hear soft footfalls and see shadowy human figures moving past with feline grace in the darkness. At other times he would be out in the woods, supervising the gathering of afresh batch of peza leaves. Suddenly the assistants would start, and sometimes drop their baskets, as two or three fur-clad figures slipped out from behind the bushes. The mountain people never stopped to talk and barely stopped to look. A moment, and they would be gone into the dripping forest as silently as they had come. At times Blade had the feeling that his laboratory was guarded by an endless coming and going of ghosts or spirits..

The youngest of the four assistants, named Kulo, turned out to have a positive genius for woodcarving. This became more and more useful as Blade's work demanded more and more precisely made equipment. Blade set Kulo some nearly impossible tasks, but somehow the young man always rose to the occasion.

That was encouraging to Blade. It would soon be time to make the first of the weapons designed for use with the distilled sleeping water. He was now spending hours with charcoal and parchment, making rough sketches of various ideas. If they could not be turned into usable weapons, all his work here would be wasted.

That was one of the thoughts that always drove Blade back to his workshop. Sometimes it made him wish that there were more than twenty-four hours in a day.

One gray morning, things were going so well in the workshop that Blade slept late and ate a leisurely breakfast. Then he went out to help bring in a caravan of porters bringing more threebo stems. Although the threebo grew this high in the mountains, it grew more abundantly in the lowlands, and the warmer weather down there made the stems grow thicker and stronger. So the High Kaireen sent eight porter loads of threebo wood up to Blade each week.

Blade met the caravan half a mile downhill from the workshop. He saw the porters plod up the path toward him, each man with a bundle of threebo wood strapped across his shoulders. Blade stood while they passed by, sweating in spite of the coolness of the morning, carefully seeking out footholds in the damp earth under their feet. Not for the first time, Blade wished he could tell the people helping him at least some of what he was trying to do. That might make all the sweat and all the long hours seem more worthwhile. But the secret had to remain a secret for a while longer.

Of course Kulo had probably already guessed much of what Blade planned. But Kulo was also the one Blade trusted most, in spite of his youth. Kulo would keep his mouth shut.

Blade watched the last of the porters disappear up the hill into the dripping forest. For the moment he was alone among the trees, and he savored the sensation. He had been busy too long, with too many hours spent in smoke and fume-laden air in the dark, almost airless workshop. The limitless forests of Gleor in all their wild beauty were all around him; he should take more advantage of this.

After the work is over, he told himself firmly. After he had found his answer to the stolofs, he and Neena would come back up here for a few days by themselves. Then there would be time to hunt, bathe in the mountain streams (as cold as they were), make love in-

A soft whistle sounded behind Blade. He turned around, drawing his sword as he did so.

One of the mountain hunters stood beside a huge moss-grown tree, raising a hand in salute to Blade.

«Hail, Prince Blade. One of my brothers has been bitten by a snake. He has need of a Kaireen's wisdom to heal him. We have heard that you have that wisdom, along with your warrior's skills. Will you follow me, and do what can be done to aid my brother?»

Blade didn't recognize the man facing him, of course. That was no surprise. He had seen only a handful of clansmen by daylight, and none for very long. The whole thing seemed safe enough, and he did have sword, knife, bow, and arrows. For all the guards in the forest around him, Blade never went anywhere unarmed.

He followed the hunter off into the forest. They went downhill for about a mile, then struck north. The hunter seemed to know exactly where he was going, and set a fast pace. Several times the path led down into hollows that were filled with mist like thick dirty cotton wool. With the trees and the dampness and mist all around, there was little noise except water dripping and their own feet on the path. Even these sounds were weirdly distorted. Almost anyone except Blade would have begun to feel slightly uncomfortable, this far out in an unknown part of the mist-shrouded forest. Even Blade kept his hand close to his sword hilt and his eyes continuously roving about him, searching the forest on all sides.

The hunter led him onward for nearly half an hour. Then suddenly they were in a small clearing. To Blade's right stood a sagging log hut, with a roof of raggedly piled branches. As Blade turned to look more closely at it, the hunter suddenly darted to the left. Before Blade could move or speak, the man vanished into the forest. A moment later even the thud of his running feet faded away, and Blade was alone.

For a moment he was more surprised than angry. Then the thought flashed through his mind that the trees around the clearing could easily conceal an ambush forty men strong.

If there were, then they would most likely be expecting him to turn and run. So he would not do what they expected. Instead of spinning around and dashing off down the path, he dove for the cover of the hut. He would not dive inside, either. Then they could come at him without being seen and burn him out.

Blade flattened himself in the bushes growing up along one side of the hut. He now had cover in one direction and could see in the other three, while he himself was well hidden as long as he kept low. He would do just that, until whoever might be lurking out there made their next move.

Instead, the next move came from inside the hut. Blade heard footsteps, then a low but unmistakably feminine laugh. Still keeping low, Blade crept around toward where he could look into the hut. He had just reached the corner of the hut, when the reed curtain across the door was thrust aside from within.

Queen Sanaya of Draad stepped out into the clearing, threw her head back, and laughed again.